Building REAL Life Resilience

REAL life resilience is also called “ordinary magic” – Studies have found that “resilience is common and typically arises from the operation of basic protections”– Resilience is built from the accumulation of small acts of support from your family, friends and community. On this episode Dr Brenda Dobia talks about REAL life resilience.

Kate Pascoe Squires found resilience in her own life and helps others find it in there is through community support initiatives. The resilience she found to help her through an endometriosis scare and help her raise her family every day comes largely from one of her mantras “if you can’t find the light, be patient and it will come”.

Tom Harley won 2 AFL premierships as captain of Geelong, and he is now the CEO at the Sydney Swans – on this episode Tom talks about how the lessons in humility he learned from his father and grandfather have helped him find success in a ruthlessly competitive world.

A lot of people feel like they have to GIVE something back to be seen as resilient, but just keeping your family TOGETHER and being by each other side is enough to give people the confidence to take on the world. Barnaby’s cousin Prue Clark reported on the 9/11 bombings at ground zero for ABC Australia, has reported on war crimes, the Ebola crisis a,nd female genital mutilation in Africa, and has hosted UN conferences, but she is using all of the resilience she has found to help the children grow into confident young adults.

In a world that seems to be getting more and more competitive in the sporting arena, in this episode Tracey Holmes reveals how you don’t HAVE to finish first at all costs to be proud of yourself.

If nice guys finish last in sport, GWS Giants netball Sam Poolman should be at the bottom of the heap – Sam is a humble, authentic, lovely human being who respects her opponents and on this episode talks about the balance between humility and trying to win in professional sport.

When one of your family go to hospital and the days look dark, sometimes just having a smile put on your face is all you need to make you feel like everything will be okay. I guessed this episode – Michelle Key – does just that by providing care packages for families in hospital with her huge team of volunteers at Northshore Mums Smiles2ou.

Host of Everyday Greatness – Barnaby Howarth – got his life back on track after being bashed and having a stroke, losing his first wife to breast cancer and getting diabetes by using some advice he got from a footy coach years before: “focus on the game plan and let the result take care of itself” Barnaby has been focusing on his game plan and the result is pretty spectacular – Kate Pascoe Squires interviews Barnaby on this episode.

Adding small goodness back to the world every day can be changing people’s lives more than you know it – Marcel Hadden helps disabled people live an independent life, and the accumulation of all of the small acts of support he gives every day means that his own heart is full.

Greg Castle has tried to be a good person his whole life for no other reason than it is the right thing to do, but when his wife Deb was struck down with advanced breast cancer the community that Greg had given so much back to got around him to give him all the support he needed. This is the story of “paying it forward” in goodness.

Being a loving husband and the coach of your son’s football team doesn’t sound like that big a deal, but when Paul Charles fell off a stair rail and landed on concrete on his head when he was 25 his life was in the balance, so now just being an everyday Joe bag O’Doughnuts makes Paul one of the proudest men in Australia.

Obsessing over being “perfect” can lead people to take extreme measures – it led Michael Talbot to an eating disorder resulting in anorexia as a kid, but it was when Michael stopped obsessing over living a “perfect” jife and just tried to make every day “pretty good” that his life became pretty much perfect.